


Absolute

by Tigerine (sealink)



Category: DRAMAtical Murder (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 10:30:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2847743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sealink/pseuds/Tigerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mink and Sei exist in a relationship that is part lovers, part caretaker-and-ward. Entrusting himself to the foreign man wasn't the best option, but it was the only one Sei had at the time. Now, months later, he lives with Mink in the Americas, just as isolated as he was in Oval Tower and just as dependent on Mink as he was on Toue. When Mink takes time off from work to make a traditional salve with fresh flowers, Sei thinks that seeing more of Mink might be enough to get his wary caretaker to trust him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Absolute

**Author's Note:**

> This is a gift in fulfillment of the 2014 Mink Secret Santa event for Nailo (tumblr user bitchywhitemobboss). They are a good friend of mine, so keeping this under wraps was hard, but I hope they will be satisfied with the result.

Light from the kitchen’s open door is barely enough to reveal the patch of dead grass and gravel where Mink’s truck is usually parked at this hour. The highest clouds are still limned with red even though twilight has settled on this side of the mountains. The birds have stopped calling, settling into their bowers for the evening. Their songs are replaced by the occasional hoots of owls and the high-pitched chittering of bats. Sei knows from experience that if he goes out to the ridge and lifts his voice up, the wolves will answer. With one more look down the driveway, he goes back inside and closes the door.

It is nearly an hour after this that Sei opens his eyes at the sound of heavy footsteps on the porch. The door opens and closes; without looking to see who it is, Sei asks a question. “You’re home late. Where did you go?”

“Out.”

“Out where?” Mink doesn’t reply immediately, walking into the kitchen. Sei hears him tug on the pullchain in the can pantry. “Are you going out again?”

“Not until tomorrow,” comes the faint reply. Heavy clunks, one after another, reach Sei’s ears from the pantry. There is a sound like the ringing of a blade being pulled from a scabbard, and it is this noise that prompts Sei to get up off the couch, wandering through the house until he is standing in the doorway of the can pantry.

“What are we going to eat for dinner?”

“Vegetable soup,” Mink says. “I put some out to thaw last night.”

The room is small and dark, and Mink’s large frame fills the space easily, there is no room for Sei. “What are you doing?”

Mink pauses in his work, troweling something thick over sheets of glass that are set inside old apiary frames, like windows. “Some preparation.”

“Preparation? For what?”

“I’ve taken the next two weeks off of work.”

“Is that really okay?” When Mink looks up, Sei’s hand is curled protectively against his chest, as if drawn back in fear. Mink shifts on his feet and then he nods slowly.

“We have enough saved up that it isn’t a problem,” he says, and Sei visibly relaxes. “Besides, this is more important.”

“More important than what?”

“Than money.”

Mink and Sei stare at each other in a silent standoff before Sei folds his arms over his chest, tucking his fingers in. “Will I get to see more of you?”

The trowel sweeps across the glass, ringing as it lifts free from the frame. “Yes.” He dips the blade into a container, pulling up another large white wad that he transfers to the glass and flattens out. “If you want.”

Neither of them speaks for the space of a heartbeat. “I’d like that.”

Mink nods in return.

***

 “I’m tired.”

“You’re welcome to go back indoors,” Mink replies, bending down and pulling another tender bunch of flowers off a stem at his feet.

“I can’t exactly go back on my own.” Sei’s long black sleeves gather over his hands. Even though the spring has warmed considerably, he still burns easily, especially after being shut up in the house all winter.

Mink lifts his head, looking at Sei and then sticks the herb in the basket he’s carrying with a sigh.  He climbs over the few small mounds between them, picking his way carefully to avoid trampling any of the herb. Though it grows wild, it is not widespread enough to be reckless; even harvesting the blossoms is something he does carefully. “This is enough for today,” he relents.

“You come here every day. Haven’t you gotten enough?”

“Enough of what?”

“Seeing this place.”

They walk past a skeletal tree, its trunk blackened, but roots too deep to let it topple over. It stands in place, a dead sentinel, and divides the path between them. They fall into step next to each other again on the other side of the tree. “I had enough many years ago.”

“If it’s so painful, why do you come back?”

“Losing the past entirely would be more painful.”

A twig snaps under the heel of his boot, and he holds out his hand to help Sei up a slightly steep grade. Sei takes his hand, trying to avoid leaving his whole weight hanging on Mink, but he can hardly budge him. By the time they make it to the top of the ridge, Sei is gasping for air, one white hand pressed to his chest, the other on his bent knees. They go through this with every trip down into the valley; Mink leads the way to gather the herbs he needs and Sei tags along, tiring easily and needing several minutes to recuperate after the hike back up.

Mink waits for him, the basket dangling in his hand. Sei looks up at him; he knows that Mink will not leave him, but he has asked many times for help getting back to the cabin. Mink always tells him that they are never so rushed that they cannot wait for Sei to catch his breath.

Every trip, the time it takes him to recover is shorter.

Sei begins to walk when he feels better and Mink falls into step next to him.

“So what will you do with these?”

Mink looks down at Sei, one eyebrow lifted. “You had not guessed their purpose?”

“No,” Sei replies. “You don’t tell me anything about what you’re doing or why.”

“Ah,” Mink says in a low voice. He reaches into the basket and pulls one blossom from a spray, offering it to Sei to smell. Sei shakes his head slowly, confusion on his face. “No?” Rolling the petals between his fingers releases some of the fragrance into the air. He passes it under Sei’s nose again. There is a glimmer of recognition, and then Sei’s cheeks pinken slightly.

“You might have said it was for that,” he grouses.

Mink chuckles as they go up the few steps onto the cabin porch. “You’re right. I could have.”

“So why didn’t you?” Sei opens the door, leading Mink into the cabin. Mink closes the door behind them, setting the basket on the ground and taking off his boots.

“It was more useful for you to realize it yourself,” Mink responds, taking the basket into the kitchen. Sei stares after him for a moment and then sits down, pulling off his shoes and leaving them next to the door.

“Are you going to do it right now?”

“Do what?”

“Put the flowers in.”

There is a slight pause and Mink walks back through the kitchen, re-appearing in the doorway and looking down on Sei. “Why?”

“I want to see.”

“Then get up,” Mink says, his voice slightly teasing, turning and walking back into the kitchen.

Huffing slightly, Sei gets to his feet and half-walks, half-slides into the kitchen in his thick socks. Mink stands in front of the sink, gently examining each blossom for bugs or mites, removing the flowers that have already begun to wither away.

Mink keeps working even though Sei hovers at his elbow, removing the green parts—stems and leaves—before dropping the flowers into a shallow baking tray. Sei watches him with mild interest, following his hands from basket to baking dish. After a few minutes, Mink shuffles to the side, offering Sei a place in front of the basket.

Sei’s slim fingers are good at plucking the petals away from the calyx, and the work goes twice as fast with two more hands helping. In a short while, there is simply a pile of denuded branches and beheaded blossoms.

“Now what?”

Mink takes the baking dish with him into the can pantry. “We need to press them into the fat.”

“That stuff is fat?” Sei stops at the threshold; the can pantry has the feel of a wizard’s atelier, mysterious and full of herbal smells, where even simple meadow flowers can be transmuted into something infinitely more precious.

“Yes.”

“Is… is it…?”

Mink sets down the baking dish and looks back at Sei. “What?”

“Did it come from an animal?”

A small breath leaves Mink. “When we killed animals and used every part of them, yes.”

“What about now?”

“Rendering this much fat takes time,” Mink answers, beginning to shake the flowers out onto a pockmarked tray of grease. “It’s easier to buy it.” His eyes flick briefly to Sei. “If I’m going to buy it, it might as well not come from an animal.”

“Ah, that’s good to hear!”

Sei’s relieved gasp brings a smile to Mink’s lips. “Oh?”

“I didn’t want to think that something died just so we could…” Sei looks down at his hands, gathering the long sleeves in his fists, a slight blush dusting his cheeks. “…be intimate.”

“Slaughtering an animal just for that reason would be selfish,” Mink responds, pressing the flower petals into the fat with his fingertips. “But if the animal is already dead, it is more wasteful not to use whatever you can.”

Mink continues pressing the flowers into the fat, working on one tray and then the next, until the petals are so dense they hide the layer of solid grease.

“What’s that?”

Mink lifts his head. “What?”

“Those flowers.”

Mink turns his head, finding Sei pointing at a pile of bedraggled blooms in another heavy tray. “Those are the ones we picked yesterday.”

“And you’ve already used them?”

“Yes.”

“Are they no good now?”

“They’ve released everything into the fat that they can,” Mink answers, standing up and putting the trays together with another sheet of glass that drops into the frame. He weights the second glass with a can of tomato sauce taken down from the pantry. “I can’t use them in the same batch again or it will mold.” Sei wrinkles his nose, his tongue stuck out. Mink catches him making the face as he turns to collect the spent blossoms, and Sei is rewarded with a rare bemused face from Mink. “Something wrong?”

“Mold,” Sei says, disgusted.

“We’d just have to start over,” Mink responds, leaving the empty dish for the next day’s leavings.

“Good,” Sei says, not a little glad to hear it.

They walk out to the garden together and Mink casts the old flowers onto a compost heap.

“So is that all you need? The essence of the flowers?”

Mink looks down at him. “No, we need beeswax as well.”

Sei looks over at the apiaries, several hundred meters distant from the house, nestled among clumps of nectar-producing flowers and bushes. Though the herb that Mink uses grows wild there, too, Mink leaves it for the bees. “Are you using the wax from our bees?”

“Our hives are still young,” Mink says, following Sei’s line-of-sight to the stacked bee hives in the distance. “I will have to use wax from another source.”

“Are you going to buy it?”

“Can’t be helped. There’s just not enough.”

Sei turns to look at the forest, at the path they have beaten down into the valley for a week now. The calls of spring songbirds are drowned out by the wind off the ridge, lost in the size of the sky. The trees whisper in the breeze, like the soft susurrus of waves, reminding Sei of an ocean he had only ever seen from the top of Oval Tower, from secure video feeds, and still pictures on the internet. That there is not enough of something here seems strange.   

“We should get a lot of flowers,” Sei says and Mink looks back down at Sei.

“We will have enough for our needs,” he responds.

Sei purses his lips in a pout as Mink walks back over to his side and they begin the slow amble back toward the cabin.  “Do we?”

Mink lifts an eyebrow. “The only thing we use this for is—“

“That’s what I’m saying.” Sei interrupts. “Do you think that this will last us the year?”

“Sei.” Mink’s long fingers lift up Sei’s chin. His golden eyes search the black fearlessly.

“What?” The indignant pout on Sei’s lips demands satisfaction, but Mink lets his chin go free.

“…Nothing.”

“You’re always like this.”

“If you don’t like it, you’re free to leave.”

“There isn’t anywhere else for me to go.”

“You could go back to Midor—“

“There isn’t _anywhere_ for me to go.” Sei stops at the foot of the stairs that lead up to the cabin, glaring at Mink’s back, a stubborn set to his jaw.

Mink seems to sense the fierce look that spears him between his shoulder blades. With a rough sigh, he continues up the steps, his boots heavy on the boards.  “Come inside,” Mink says. Sei does not argue.

***

“There’s a patch over there,” Sei calls with his hand holding down his hat, his voice still soft even when he’s trying to yell.

Mink turns his head, following Sei’s outstretched finger that points just over a small rise in the earth. He squints against the noonday sun and then looks up to Sei, swaddled in a long sweater and floppy hat, big sunglasses on his face. “Thanks.”

The mod sunglasses make Sei’s smile look coy. “You’re welcome.”

They trail across the mounds of earth and vegetation, and Sei pauses at each unfamiliar flower, asking which ones are which. Mink knows the names of some in both his language and English. Others, there is only the English word; the other has been lost.

“Are these really the last we need?” Sei leans down, picking his own fistful of flowers, an alpine meadow bouquet.

“I go back to work the day after tomorrow,” Mink replies. His deep voice carries well over the breeze.

“So what will we do tomorrow?”

“We’ll make the ointment,” he says matter-of-factly. “It won’t take long.”

Sei walks to keep up with Mink as they move from one stand of the herb to the next. Insects buzz around them, but Sei remains still, letting them careen through the air around him, watching how Mink passes over some of the flowers for each plant.

“There’s still a lot of it, huh?”

“Yes,” he replies, putting another bunch of flowers in the basket. Unspoken is the understanding that these meadows were very carefully marshaled in years past, each patch of flowers a personal store of the herb that his people used every day. Now, with no one but Mink to pick it, they grow wild in sunny spots, the bees and flies the only ones who use them.

“How much longer will it be around?”

Mink stops and looks down at the blooms he’s already collected, and then at Sei. “It will continue to bloom for another four weeks or so.” Sei finds some mountain kittentail and holds it in his fist, looking for more colorful things to add.

“But it only blooms this time of year.” Sei’s hat flaps in the breeze as he turns his face up to look at Mink. “It seems romantic, doesn’t it?”

“What’s romantic about it?”

“Picking flowers in the springtime together when everything is full of life. Making that exuberance last all year. Especially when it’s for sex.”

“It’s not procreative,” Mink counters. “We are not—“

“Lovebirds?” Sei’s grin is salacious; he even pulls the glasses down so Mink can see the mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Not even a little bit. You are nothing like a bird.”

“Hmph,” Mink harrumphs a laugh. “Then why include us in this…exuberance?”

“It makes me feel alive,” Sei responds. A small yellow butterfly floats along on a current of air, flapping intermittently. “I didn’t think I’d like it.”

“Feeling alive? Or sex?”

“Both.” Sei looks down at his legs, at burrs caught on his sleeves. He picks them off, flicking them into the brush. “They’re both new.”

“That’s to be expected.” Mink looks across the valley at the mountains, at the snowline, still so clear even on those distant peaks. They reach the path back up the ridge and slowly go together up the steep incline. Sei is still out of breath by the time they reach the top, but he waves at Mink for them to continue back to the cabin. The brush bats at the legs of their pants as they walk, scratching and prickling at their knees. By the time their boots are on the porch, Sei’s breathing is back to normal.

Mink disappears into the can pantry to pick the old flowers out of the fat trays, leaving Sei in the kitchen alone with the basket. The tiny snip-snip of tweezers comes from the workbench in the pantry, as Mink works to remove the old flowers and make room for new ones.

By the time Mink comes back in to pick apart the flowers, Sei has the large majority of the flowers ready for the glass. With a shrewd eye, he looks over Sei’s work, pushing the petals aside and double checking that all the moist green parts have been removed. Satisfied with what he finds, Mink carries them into the pantry, heaped up in the dish like an embarrassment of riches. Sei follows him like a shadow.

Mink stops in front of the workbench, shifting on the balls of his feet as if something has just occurred to him.  “Do you want to press them in?”

The question catches Sei off-guard. “No, I’m fine with watching,” Sei says awkwardly, sidling away from the table. Mink sits down to do his work, his fingertips covered in heavily-perfumed fat. Using the same fat over and over concentrates the essence of the flowers, including the calming and healing properties for which Mink’s people harvested them. He covers the trays with glass and weights them again.

“Are you done?”

“Yes.”

“Now what?”

Mink picks up yesterday’s flowers and doesn’t leave the empty dish. “We wait until tomorrow.”

***

“Don’t leave any behind,” Mink cautions, using tweezers to dig every single petal out of the trays.

“I won’t.”

“You missed one there,” Mink points out and Sei reaches over, pinching the flower and carefully pulling it free.

On the kitchen counter, a ceramic warmer is plugged in; the scent of warm wax and honey mingles with that of the flowers. “Are we going to make it today?”

“Yes,” Mink responds patiently.

“Is it okay to eat?”

“Hmm?”

“The wax. When you put it in my mouth….”

Mink pauses, his tweezers hovering over a flower, and then he peels it up out of the frame. “Yes.”

“Do you use honey as well?”

“A little.”

“That’s what makes it sweet, isn’t it?”

Mink pauses again. “You’re full of questions today.”

“That’s not a bad thing.”

“It’s not, but…”

“But what?” Sei shifts around in his chair, reaching for a petal he missed before, a whiter shade of pale that disappeared against the grease. “What’s bad about asking questions?”

Mink says nothing at first, but then he puts down the tweezers and looks at Sei. “Toue’s men asked questions, the first time they came.” Mink’s lips are pressed together, a thin line of reticence. “I’m just not used to answering them.”

“Ah.” Sei’s voice is small, a barely-audible noise of admission.

“It’s not your fault,” Mink says.

“I bear some responsibility for his actions,” Sei admits quietly.

“No more than a gun does when someone is shot, or a knife when someone is stabbed.” Mink carefully scrapes collected fat off his tweezers into a ceramic dish. “It was his intent that made him so dangerous.” In one blink, he looks up at Sei and then back down to his task. “If you want to think you’re complicit in his crimes, you can, but it’s foolish.”

“You talk to me like I’m a tool.”

Mink picks up the metal trowel and begins to chip and scrape up the fat, laying it down in large chunks in the dish. “You were. And you would be now, if I wanted to make you into one.”

Sei’s tweezers clatter to the table, loud against the glass in the frame. Mink looks at Sei briefly and then keeps working away at the solid perfume, using the edge to carve off hunks of it, dropping them into the dish.

“Is that why you haven’t ever asked me to do anything for you during the months I’ve been here?”

Mink freezes as he reaches for a larger spatula, his eyes turning to Sei as if he has been caught in the middle of a petty theft, the evidence of his crime in his hands. “I have allowed you to be your own person, make your own choices, something a tool does not get to do.” He leans back in his chair and then looks directly at Sei, his hands folded in his lap. “Anything you want to do, you can do it. I won’t stop you. Likewise,” he offers, spreading his hands before re-folding them, “anything you don’t want to do, you don’t have to do it.” His deep voice is maddeningly calm and composed.

Sei looks up at him with an expression of dawning realization on his face. “You’re scared that I’ll think of you like Toue if you tell me to do something.”  

“I am nothing like Toue, so if you think there are similarities, that’s in your own mind.”

“You’re just as ruthless as he is.”

“Was,” Mink corrects him.

“You took me in, got me out of Midorijima. You still take care of me, and I’m grateful for that,” Sei says quietly. “But even when I was in Oval Tower, I had a purpose.”

“The purpose Toue made you and your brother for.”

“It was still a purpose.”

“It nearly killed you.” Sei nods, shrugging one of his shoulders. It’s an open acknowledgement; plenty of things nearly killed him, but not all of them gave his life meaning. “And you still don’t like being idle?”

“Don’t misunderstand.” Sei looks down at his hands, crisping his fingers together; they are plump and slick with fat. “I had an idle body for years. I like it as well now as I did then.”

Mink lifts his chin, the stern set of his eyebrows easing. “It’s like that?”

“Yes.” Sei picks up the tweezers again, beginning to pick through the fat for the flower petals.

Mink’s lips thin as he presses them together in a grimace of understanding.  He lurches forward again, picking up the large spatula and beginning to screed the rest of the fat off the glass.  The only sounds in their kitchen are the small clicks of Sei’s tweezers closing and the occasional squeak of the spatula in the frames. As Sei finishes picking the flowers out of his frame, Mink picks it up and begins to transfer the thick fat to the dish.

“If more responsibility is what you want, then I will try to rely on you more.” 

It’s a double victory for Sei. He has forced Mink to accept how Sei wants to live the life he’s stolen for himself outside Oval Tower.  But Mink has also shared something more personal with Sei: the burden of living with him, which has been shouldering alone, without complaint, up until now.

With a nod and a small ‘thank you’, Sei rubs his hands together, smoothing the fat into them. His fingers are supple and greasy, but also infused with the fragrance of the flowers. He lifts his hands to smell them and tries to figure out what is different, what is missing: the warmth of wood and cinnamon, the sweetness of honey and wax, the salt of sweat and semen. It is a brighter, sharper version of the smell he associates with the dim lighting of Mink’s bedroom, either by candle light or the weak illumination of Mink’s reading lamp. It is just a piece of the scent of lovemaking, but it is enough to make his pupils dilate and his lips part in expectation of a kiss.

“Mink…”

The sound of his name makes Mink lift his head, and his eyes drift over Sei’s hands, the way one hand has unconsciously closed around the first two fingers of his other hand, pulling toward his fingertips in a slow, rhythmic motion. Sei’s eyes are half-lidded, unfocused, and the faint touch of color in his cheeks is enough to make Mink pause.

“You’re giving me a look.”

“Am I?”

“You are,” Mink says, scraping the spatula into the dish for the last time and setting the frames aside.

“What kind of look am I giving you?” Sei finally manages to rip his eyes away from Mink, looking down at the way his oily fingers are grasping at each other.

“Like you want me to take you back to the bedroom.” He looks at Sei steadily, the intense gold of his eyes wearing upon him like a hot wind.

Sei looks down at the table, at the frames stacked neatly on the table, the dish full of the product of their work. He licks his lips to moisten them and then looks back up at Mink again. “You’re in the middle of something.”

“We are in the middle of something, yes,” Mink says, standing and taking the dish of perfumed fat over to the counter.

“Mink—“ Sei stops as Mink places the dish on the counter next to the warmer and then faces Sei, leaning against the counter with his arms folded and his head slightly tilted. It only takes a moment before Sei realizes that Mink is waiting for him to do something.

Sei pushes his chair back from the table with a scrape and then saunters over to Mink, holding his hands out like an invitation. He reaches up and touches his oiled fingers to his neck, spreading the perfume over the parts of his skin where his blood runs closest to the surface.  Mink frowns slightly, pinning Sei with a discerning look.

Raised in a laboratory, Sei understands well the coupled nature of stimulus and response. If he cannot help but think of sex when surrounded by the fragrance of this flower, then Mink might be similarly primed.

Sei skims the pulse points behind his ears and then the insides of his elbows, leaving traces of the oil to bloom and change with the heat of his body. The countertop creaks as Mink stops leaning against it, standing up straight; the piercing regard shifts to something more desirous and lustful. Sei smiles coyly and rubs his wrists with the last of the oil on his hands. With a meaningful look at Mink, he extends his arm up next to Mink’s face, offering up his anointed skin.

Mink turns his head to the side, the tip of his nose grazing Sei’s skin. Like any perfume, the fat from enfleurage could be mixed with ethanol and used to make an absolute, a concentrated essence of the flowers that were pressed into it every day for weeks.

“Do I smell good?” Sei’s voice is barely a whisper.

‘Good’ is a poor choice of words. Yes, he is wearing the scent of the flower that gives the lubricating salve its potent physical effect. Like any perfume, the scent changes depending on who wears it. Fixed in alcohol and water, the lightest volatiles are rendered up to the air, followed by the next lightest, and so on until nothing is left.  Fixed in the fat, the scent stays on Sei’s skin, glistening and fragrant, making the air near his skin heavy with a meadow’s sun-warmed abundance, a concentrated smell of exuberance and fecundity. He smells hot and vital and eager, like making love in their bedroom but also like fucking against the front door the moment it closes.

“Yes,” Mink answers.

They forget to unplug the warmer before Mink picks Sei up and carries him into the bedroom. Sei is impatient, already half-hard. His fingers pull at Mink’s pants, his brow creased as he tries in vain to get the jeans off while Mink unbuttons his shirt in his usual measured way.

They use the last of the previous year’s lube, scraping out the bottom of the jar. The two years of meadow flowers mix on Sei’s body, one thick and sweet, the other green and wet. Grasping at each other to get closer isn’t easy; everywhere they touch, their fingers slide right off their bodies, rubbing the perfume into their skins with each movement they make. Mink uses the force of his grip to hold Sei’s hips; Sei whines in delight when Mink is finally inside him. He is never loud enough to shake the rafters, but the sighing moans and the pleading tone in his voice when he begs Mink not to stop are more than worth the hearing. Mink gasps when he comes inside him, all his strength and frenzy spent in a moment. They fall together in a sticky pile of sweat-shined limbs and rest until their breathing is slow and even again.

***

“Be careful,” Mink warns.

“I am.” Sei dips out molten portions of the salve from the warmer, slowly pouring them in the jars Mink sets out. His fingers are still plump and soft from the enfleurage.

Mink looks into the warmer and then at the jars they have made. “One more after this one.”

“Is that all?” Sei looks at the flight of glass cordials, each filled nearly to the edge with liquid.

“Yes, that’s it.”

“Is that really enough?” The wax-oil mixture makes no sound as Sei pours the last of it into the last jar. He taps the ladle against the glass.

“You sound like you’re planning to use it as fast as you can.” Mink shoots him a dry look and nods to the warmer.

Sei unplugs the warmer and steps away from the counter. Using a thick woven mitt, Mink pulls the ceramic dish out of the warmer and scrapes the last of the salve out with a spatula into the last jar. “If we need more next year you’ll have to take more time off of work.”

“Is that your plan?”

“It’s a good plan,” Sei protests.

Mink puts the lids on the jars, spinning them down with his long fingers until they’re nearly tight. He checks each jar for cracks, and after each jar has passed inspection, he puts them all in a tray and moves them into the can pantry to cool.

“So what do we do now?” Sei leans against the door frame, watching Mink tighten down the lids a little more.

“We clean up,” Mink replies, one hand on his hip, his eyes still on the jars. “Remove the glass from the frames, wash them so that rancid fat doesn’t spoil next year’s batch. Clean the warmer out, wash the dishes, toss the last flowers out with the compost. Dinner after that.”

“Can I make it?”

Mink lifts an eyebrow. “It’s just defrosting something from the freezer.”

“That’s still making it.” Sei’s face is guileless, or near enough to it.

Mink looks at their work, each jar filled with flowers they both picked and the memories of the past two weeks. They are closer now than they were at the start, the lazy breakfasts and hour-long walks bringing them closer, the shared touches and glances binding them together.

They have lost things too: inhibitions and walls between them, expectations and misunderstandings. These have been yielded up to the air, leaving behind something lush and tangible; something concrete.  

He gives Sei a small nod. “Make it, then.” 


End file.
